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Unit 13 covered teaching pronunciation and phonology I smiled when I read one thing in the unit this time, and that is that if the students learn the phonemic alphabet, they should be able to accurately pronounce every word in the dictionary. I have been learning Vietnamese for over three years now. The written language was built to be phonetic - one sound per letter. So I was told the same thing. Learn the letters and you can pronounce everything correctly and distinguish every word you hear. However it was simply not the case. I have through hard work built what seems to be an acceptable pronunciation. But I think the I had problems mainly because my tongue is a western tongue and not an Asian tongue and our tongues are not shaped the same. I cannot say I have been successful teaching English phonetically using the phonemic chart; however, I understand that once I start teaching classes that are more standard, I will have to do so if it is expected, and so I have used this unit to really try to get a better grasp of the phonology chart and its usage. I can certainly see the advantages and I do use it from time to time to try to differentiate the sounds for the students. I do notice though that most of my students just use the verbal pronunciation cues rather than try to decipher the phonemic symbols. The downside of that is that they can get quite sloppy in their pronunciation because they do not learn to break down the individual sounds and articulate them correctly. So I can say that the main thing that I learned from this unit is good justification to learn and implement the phonemic symbols. I will say that attempting to teach Vietnamese students correct English pronunciation has some real obstacles. They have a thick tongue, perfectly built for their sounds. Our English tongue is flat. So sometimes they just cannot seem to say the sound quite accurately. But if they can get the word stress and sentence intonation correct, their word pronunciation is far less of a factor in their being understood by others. I appreciated all that this unit covered regarding sentence intonation and word stress. And I did really like the articulation information. The summary of this unit is as follows: An effective teacher considers the teaching of pronunciation an integral part of the course. Phonology is the study, science, analysis and classification of the physical properties of sounds. Some sort of instinctive perception is essential for a full understanding of what is being said, and some sort of analytical perception is useful for correct production. Intonation is generally considered to be the variation in volume and pitch in a whole sentence, whereas stress is concerned with individual words. Intonation carries the message in a sentence. The three basic patterns of intonation are: > Rise/fall - indicates you're finished talking, or asks a straightforward question > Fall/Rise - indicates surprise and often disagreement, but above all expects a response > Basically Flat - indicates the speaker doesn't have much to say and is not interested in communicating Some ways to teach intonation are: > Nonsense words > By gesturing > Humming or singing > The board - drawing arrows Stress - >The strong part of the sentence is the stressed word, or word that bears the principal emphasis. > All multi-syllable words in English have one ore more parts that are stressed, as follows: 1. One word has only one stress 2. Only syllables can be stressed, not individual vowels or consonants 3. There are general (complicated) rules for which syllable of a word to stress based on how many syllables a word has. These are a lot of exceptions. > In normal speech, there are more syllables without stress than with. Auxiliary verbs, articles, pronouns and prepositions are almost always unstressed. >Some different techniques for indicating and teaching stress are as follows: 1. Contrastive stress 2. By gesture 3. Choral word 4. The board 5. Stress marks There are four major ways that sounds join together in English > Linking > Sound dropping (t,d) > Sound changing > Extra lettering The International Phonemic Alphabet was produced as a result of the extreme irregularities in the pronunciation of English, not only within a particular accent, but for all of the different English accents found all over the world. Each sound is giving its own phonemic symbol, allowing English words to be technically written in this alphabet. If an English student can learn to recognize each symbol and clearly and accurately articulate all of these sounds, they should theoretically be able to correctly pronounce every word in an English dictionary that uses these symbols for pronunciation. Articulation > The speech organs and areas are: 1. The tongue 2. The larynx 3. The glottis 4. The alveolar ridge 5. The hard palate 6. The soft palate > Place of Articulation - 1. Velar 2. Palatal 3. Palatal-alveolar 4. Alveolar 5. Dental 6. Labio-dental 7. Bilabial 8. Glottal >Manner of Articulation: 1. Plosive 2. Fricative 3. Nasal 4. Lateral 5. Affricate 6. Approximate Teaching techniques for the pronunciation of individual sounds > Peer dictation > Your own mouth > Visuals > Phonemes > Tongue twisters When to teach pronunciation will change based on the class and needs. Most common are: > Whole lesson > Lesson slots > As and when required In conclusion - "At the end of the day, we must be realistic in our teaching and sometimes be prepared to accept intelligibility instead of perfection." In my opinion, it should be "often" rather than just "sometimes". I value fluent pronunciation, but in my own language learning I have realized that when I strive for perfectly spoken speech, I become unsure of myself. That defeats the purpose. I think your lessons stress this, to maintain a balance between accuracy and fluency. I appreciate this very much.